This may sound like a bit of a rant. But it isn’t: it’s very good advice.
When I speak to non-professional investors about the issues they usually face I often say that the current state of affairs is in part the result of their own demands
I am comforted by noticing that at least one group of public servants are doing exactly what they are supposed to do: governing; running things. That is what three central bankers have done over the past couple of weeks. We may argue if they did the right or wrong thing. But they did their job.
Implied inflationary expectations fell last week, as evidenced by the performance differential between nominal bonds [+2.7%] and inflation linkers [+0.8%].
The problem with bank failures is that no one knows where the knots are and who or what will come next. Like an outbreak of Ebola, you know the virus is there but you don’t know where it will pop up.
The mood of equity investors turned positive with indications that growth is resilient in the US, improving in Europe and accelerating in China.
Markets and commentaries continue to be dominated by speculations on the direction of official rates.
We live in strange times. Among other things, an international media organization can get away with knowingly disseminating false news without apparently losing viewers.
Things looked more or less stable until they no longer did: Friday’s employment report in the US took many by surprise and forced market participants to revise overly optimistic interest rate paths.
Equities had another good week while interest rates were all marginally up. There was not much to report in terms of news or other market related issues.
A mixed week, with markets focusing on monetary policy developments (particularly in Japan) and on the results of the earnings season. I’m always amazed at the amount of attention bestowed upon a single quarterly statistic.